ReKnew
Why Do Christians Keep Struggling With Sin?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Flesh, Identity in Christ, Seeing is Believing
Topics: Sin
If we truly are righteous in Christ Jesus (see Earlier Post about our identity in Christ), why do we need to be reminded to live righteous lives? If we are new creations and have a…
How People Misunderstand Open Theism
Category: General
Tags: Calvinism, Divine Foreknowledge, Free Will, freedom, Future, Open Future, Open Theism
Topics: Free Will and the Future, Open Theism What it is and is not
Open theism holds that, because agents are free, the future includes possibilities (what agents may and may not choose to do). Since God’s knowledge is perfect, open theists hold that God knows the future partly as a realm of…
9 Reasons Faith ≠ Certainty
Category: General
Tags: Apologetics, Benefit of the Doubt, Doubt, Faith, Religious Idolatry
Topics: Faith & Doubt
One of the things that Christians typically believe in and that I’ve struggled with a great deal is the concept of faith. Like most Christians, I once assumed a person’s faith is as strong as…
Did Jesus Believe in Satan?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Demons, Jesus, Satan, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Jesus’ teaching, his exorcisms, his healings and other miracles, as well as his work on the cross, all remain somewhat incoherent and unrelated to one another until we interpret them as acts of war. As…
6 Things the Church Fathers Can Teach Us about Spiritual Warfare
Category: General
Tags: Evil, Natural Evil, Problem of Evil, Satan, Sin, Spiritual Warfare, Theodicy
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Image by Christina Saint Marche via Flickr Unlike our thinking today about the source of good and evil in the world, the early church fathers, including Irenaus, Athenagorus, Origen, and others before Augustine, possessed a warfare…
What Does It Mean that God Hardens Hearts?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Choice, Determinism, Free Will, Is God to Blame?, Open Theism, Predestination
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Some argue that passages which speak of God hardening human hearts (Jos 11:19-20; Ex 7:3; 10:1; Rom 9:18) demonstrate that God controls everything, including people resistant to this declared intentions. He hardens whomever he wills,…
Atonement: What is the Christus Victor View?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Atonement, Christus Victor, Cruciform Theology, God's Wrath, Jesus, Penal Substitution View of Atonement, Satan
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement
Most western Christians today understand the atonement as a sort of legal-transaction that took place between the Father and the Son that got humanity “off the hook.” The legal-transaction scenario goes something like this: God’s…
Are Christians Required to Give 10% of Their Income to the Church?
Category: General
Tags: Christian Life, Finances, Tithing
Question: I and my husband have become increasingly uncomfortable with the many sermons on tithing we’ve been recently hearing at our church. Our pastor insists we tithe 10% to the church regardless of what else we…
What We’re Up Against
Category: General
Tags: Evil, Kingdom of God, Kingdom of this World, Satan, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Though Jesus dealt a final blow to Satan’s kingdom through the cross and resurrection, the New Testament makes it clear that Satan is still viewed as the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), “the…
The Nature of Temptation
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Desires, Sin, Temptation
How does temptation work? Based on James 1:13-16, Greg unpacks the way that desire can give birth to sin. But desire is actually rooted in our longing for God, and the desire itself—and therefore the…
A Cross-Like Church
Category: General
Tags: Church, Evangelism, Love
Topics: Following Jesus
When God’s church loves like God loves—which means valuing the other at cost to self—it will puzzle those outside the church. While such love might cause the religious to rail with outrage, it will cause…
When We Talk Politics
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Conflict, Humility, Politics, Sermons
In this clip, Greg identifies a source of much of the conflict we experience in our conversations about politics, or other important topics. He does this by introducing the phrase, “your map is not the…
God’s Dream for the World
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Non-Violence
One of the grandest expressions of non-violent nature of God is found in Isaiah 11. Here God is dreaming of a time when his creation would be entirely free of violence. “The wolf will live…
The Secret
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Gratitude, Happiness
I Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Most Americans define themselves as distinctly unhappy. Why is…
A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Apology, Peacemaking, Racial Reconciliation, Sermons
In this sermon clip, Greg, as a representative of a white man in America, asks for forgiveness of people of color for all the harm that white America has done. This is not about disparaging…
Revolting Beauty
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Sermons, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In this sermon clip, Greg shares the story of how foster parents entered into the pain of a severely abused child and demonstrated compassion rather than judgment when she displayed puzzling and revolting behaviors. This…
The ReKnew Cross Vision Conference is Coming!
Category: General
Tags: Cross Vision, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Upcoming Conference
Since its release in mid-April, Crucifixion of the Warrior God has helped a multitude of people fully embrace for the first time the beautiful God revealed in Jesus’ cross-centered life and ministry. It has helped…
Four Principles of the Cruciform Thesis
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the second volume of Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I introduce how four dimensions of the revelation of God on the cross (as introduced in this post) lead to four principles that show us…
Two Questions to Unlock Violent Divine Portraits
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, OT Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
There are two basic questions that help us to interpret what is going on in the violent portraits of God in the Old Testament, as I propose in Crucifixion of the Warrior God. The First…